Offtrack

Sometimes I lose track of life for a bit...I stop caring about productivity or improvement -- let alone cleaning my environment -- and just settle in with a bunch of movies and totally vegetate on my couch.

This can happen due to depression, or several days of poor blood sugar, or because of a series of misfortunes. In this case, however, my total lack of production -- and therefore the absence of blog posts -- has been caused by an uncomfortable, low-level anxiety about life in general.

My life is good, really! When TERRIBLE things happen around me I tend to get motivated and I go around and fix whatever needs fixing. But in these cases when stuff is just SORT of bad, my childish response is to drop everything, stop answering email, hole up in my apartment, eat junk food, and do nothing.

Which is exactly what I've been doing up until yesterday, when I think my funk finally broke. I made some progress on a piece of music called "Roadbird" that I've been playing with for a while, and went to see the Rollerderby grudge match in New Hamburg (I decided to root for the Venus Fly Tramps BEFORE I realized they were winning!)

This morning I pulled a four-inch roundworm out of my cat, which has actually been a bit of a motivator: now I have a tangible indication of what's wrong with her and how to tackle it. I'm actually looking forward to getting stuff done today, which is a much nicer feeling than just passively floating around and keeping my head down.

So here's to smooth production and a glorious sense of purpose, and those inevitable periods of down-time which make the better moments feel so darn good!

New EP By Andy Prieboy

More interesting than Halley's Comet and nearly as rare, Andy Prieboy has quietly released a new EP.

My love and admiration for brilliant artists ranges across a pretty wide spectrum, but Prieboy is at the top of the list. I can honestly say he is my All-Time Favourite Musician.

You can preview and buy the songs on his sparse and suddenly-active website. Meanwhile, somebody has made a surprisingly engaging independent video for one of the songs, "Bands," which I suspect is from his as-yet unreleased musical "White Trash Wins Lotto."

Meeses to Pieces

After Zsa Zsa devoured a mouse from head to tail a few weeks ago, I did some research and discovered that mice are a wonderful type of cat food. I'm worried that she'll get tapeworms from eating them, but since there's no way to stop her I've decided to make the best of it.

We know that the mice prefer to enter my apartment through a vent under my kitchen table, so I built a special "mouse blind" for Zsa Zsa to hide behind while hunting. Five minutes ago she trotted into the computer room, dropped a mouse at my feet, and proceeded to eat it.

I knew you'd want to see this so I took lots of pictures -- and even a video -- but I'm afraid that they're just too disgusting. Instead of swallowing this one whole, she chewed bits and pieces off from various places, and while I'm amazed at the total lack of blood I am less surprised at the reverse-flow through the mouse's digestive tract...something you don't want to see.

So I'm afraid you'll need to take my word for it. Zsa Zsa is accepting congratulations for a job well done, and also soliciting tips for preparing tasty mouse treats.

The Gay-Musician-Love-Dog Disconnect

Today I bought a copy of Erasure's "Hits!" DVD. The word "campy" isn't sufficient to describe it, so I have coined a much more extreme term: "bivouwacky."

Particularly bivouwacky is the video for "Heavenly Action," in which Andy Bell plays a spaceman who runs afoul of a nosferatu-styled villain played by Vince Clark.

I was initially distracted by all the creepy cherubs, but then I twigged to the way the song's lyrics had been realized. "Heavenly Action" was a straight-forward love song, and it was an open secret even then that Bell was gay -- his space-suit ensemble in the video included ruby high heels, for goodness sake -- so it really would have been strange to show him falling in love with a WOMAN.

To get around this they portrayed him falling in love with a DOG.



You just weren't going to see same-sex love on MTV in 1985 -- I suppose bestiality was more acceptable -- so this puts me in mind of OTHER popular love songs written by the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell musicians of the time. Freddie Mercury wrote some eternal love songs ("Love of My Life" etc.) which any sane person assumed were actually about men, but Queen's videos -- as far as I remember -- didn't ever show the objects of his affection (though by the time of the EXTREMELY biviouwacky "I Want To Break Free" he was a John Waters-style, mustachioed hair-hopper pushing a vacuum).

We were too busy looking at Elton John's hair implants to notice his music video partners, you simply couldn't think of Fred Schneider as a sexual human being, and it seemed to me that Jimmy Somerville wrote more about oppression than love. Marc Almond skirted around the issue by simply being sleezy-kinky, though there was a strange disconnect between him being a flaming, somewhat chipmunky homosexual AND a sex symbol for teenage girls at the same time.

So I wonder what Andy Bell and Vince Clark thought about the "dog-lover" concept in "Heavenly Action." Chances are they enjoyed the ridiculousness of it all, but it must have sucked to have a heartfelt love song treated that way.

To Whom Will You Entrust Your Trees?

When you're hiring a tree surgeon, according to the March 23'29 New Yorker, you don't want to hire some lazy guy from the gutter...you want a man who can do this:


They're members of the Davey Institute of Tree Surgery "Tumbling Team," of course! Because the Davey Institute knows that tree surgeons must have "physical energy," and I guess they might want to go into Vaudeville if the tree thing doesn't work out.

It amazes me that there ever WERE tree surgeons, and I'm almost as amazed to discover that they still exist. I assumed from watching cartoons that the tree surgeons rushed around and pressed stethoscopes against the trunks of sick trees, but apparently their job is more sedate than all that, despite the existence of the Davey Institute Tumbling Team. I think they basically go around and write reports.

The massive two-page advertisement in this New Yorker, however, makes me think that tree surgeons back then would work for either rich landowners or for people who ran orchards. The advertisement doesn't describe what the tree surgeons actually DID -- referring to their actions as simply "the work" -- but it must have been a huge business, considering this was the Davey Institute class of 1929:


That's a lot of tree surgeons.

Alas, Beckzy, We Hardly Knew Ye

I decided to drive to work this morning so I could pick up cat supplies on the way home. At the corner of Erb and Caroline, however, Beckzy stalled...and just wouldn't start again.

That intersection is a bit of a zoo during rush-hour and people were honking and waving at me, so I put on the hazard lights, got out of the car, and locked the door. For the first time I was acutely aware of not having a cel phone. I was alarmed to see tiny wisps of smoke coming out from under Beckzy's hood.

Just as I'd decided to walk to the nearby police station, a sweet guy named Ian pulled over and offered to call a tow truck for me. While we were debating who to call, Beckzy made up our minds by releasing an enormous plume of smoke, so Ian called 911 and asked for a fire truck; we stood and watched as Beckzy became obscured by a black, evil-smelling cloud, and then we backed up another twenty feet when the undercarriage began to burn.

So there I was, at nine in the morning, watching my beloved car catch fire with a sweet stranger who was kind enough to stick around. Policemen arrived and they blocked off the road. Firemen came with gas masks and smashed the hood open, spraying water everywhere. It was the most surreal moment of my life.

Once the fire was out I asked the fireman why it happened. "It just happened," he said, and gestured at the melted mess that was once the front of my car. Then he laughed. "You'll never know now!" The policemen were delighted because they'd never seen a burning car before. Ian remarked quietly that the policewomen were very pretty.

I felt a strange giddiness. While waiting for the tow truck we stood around and talked about mundane things, one of the policewomen occasionally running off to chase people who were trying to run the barricade. I learned that Wednesdays are quiet days for crime until 10am, when house thieves traditionally break into homes vacated by the 9-5 crowd. I learned that the police station is too small and that they send their criminals to the holding tanks in Kitchener. I became intimately familiar with the smell of burning toxic chemicals.

Then the old people started to arrive. Nothing makes an old man happier than a melted car. "It just burned up!" they'd say, peering through the windows and poking around underneath. "You won't be driving this one again!" Women brought their children to look. "What a car!" they'd say, and the children would stare, terrified.

The Practical Side of Things

A company came and towed my car to the pound for $269. Since they'd charge an extra $25 for each day the bill was unpaid, my boss was sweet enough to drive me to Breslau and settle the account. They told me to go to a scrap dealer and sign the car over to them, and my boss drove me there too. It was an amazingly cramped and greasy building full of "Beware of Dog" signs, where you have to sign in and wear workboots if you want to go past the counter. Lots of stubble in that place. They had their names embroidered on their overalls. They gave me $150.

I had declined the non-liability portions of my car insurance so I was unable to get any other money for Beckzy's burned-out carcass.

What I Think About the Situation

Thank goodness this didn't happen on a highway during a snowstorm with me in drag. And thank goodness for the kindness of strangers, the cheerful professionalism of the police and firemen, and the guy who ran over with a tiny extinguisher and volunteered to fight the fire singlehandedly. Thank goodness for the instinct that makes humans huddle up when something freaky happens. Thanks most of all to Ian, who calmly directed the situation until the police showed up, and then stood around to shoot the shit, and THEN called my work to tell them I'd be late.

I'm sad because I bought the car and then barely drove it...but the point IS that I didn't drive it very much. I bought it to take me to family functions and drag shows -- which rarely happen -- and to take me to bars, which I decided never to do. I also wanted to drive to remote places and perhaps go camping, but I was never totally confident that Beckzy could take me that far (with reason, it turns out).

I liked knowing that Beckzy was there in case of an emergency, and it was also nice to know that she could take me to places I otherwise couldn't go.

One group of people are now telling me to lease or buy a new-ish car...then I could feel confident driving it, and it would be more comfortable, and I wouldn't worry about people making fun of it or denigrating it. Another group are encouraging me to check out a car share instead...that way I could still get to out-of-town events when necessary...in an emergency I could always take a cab.

In a way, Beckzy's sudden end is a relief because I no longer have to worry about her; I lost enough money to make me sad, but I am no longer faced with thoughts of euthanasia; she can't be repaired, she's already scrap, she's gone. I will no longer sit here on weekends thinking "I should go out and USE the car but I just don't FEEL like it."

I like to think that Beckzy decided to go out with a bang. Instead of whimpering and stalling and dragging along, she burst into flame and created a fiery spectacle. It's how she wanted to die.

Singing Accent

When I was in grade three I noticed that the children around me sang with a subtle British accent. This was strange because none of us had British accents otherwise, but somehow, when we sang in music class, our vowels would warp until we became distinctly...British.

I was probably sensitized to this because I was listening to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" at the time, which contains that "Hey teacher" children's chorus on "Another Brick in the Wall." THOSE kids sounded British too, but they actually WERE British, and I'd somehow picked up on the fact that when WE sang, WE sounded like THEM.

Around this time my father started insisting that us Southern Ontario people didn't HAVE accents; he believed -- and still believes -- that we have become the lowest common denominator of English speech, a mix of all possible accents together until we don't HAVE one anymore. He justifies this by claiming that when people sing they always sound like US, and therefore singing must somehow REMOVE accents, resulting (I suppose) in some sort of pure, undiluted English.

As a child I could never put my objections to this theory into words, but now I suspect that my father was analyzing a certain subset of music, probably bands subsequent to the British Invasion. And it's true, when you listen to bands from England during that period -- Led Zeppelin, say -- many of them DON'T sound British.

But something I realized while listening to my classmates sing was that singing is not something "pure" that releases us from our speech patterns...at the very least it is just another type of affectation. If Julie Andrews could sing in a Cockney accent during "My Fair Lady" even though she wasn't actually British, it's obvious that a British singer could sound North American in exactly the same way...which stands to reason, considering many of those British Invasion bands were emulating American blues and skiffle musicians, and many of them craved acceptance on the Billboard charts.

If you listen to a British band that is NOT trying to be self-consciously American, however, you hear a very thick accent. It might not sound EXACTLY regional -- because, as I said, singing involves affectation and imitation just as much as any other activity does -- but a band like "The Pipettes" certainly doesn't sound like they come from Southern Ontario, that's for sure.

None of this explains why us little Canadian kids sounded British when we sang, however, but I've noticed that it isn't just children who do this...a subset of Canadian artists sound self-consciously British when they sing. Maybe, as kids, we were imitating British new wave bands? Maybe it just seemed like the best way to sing? Or maybe there's some germ of British inflection that comes out when we let our guard down?

"Crash" Again

I seem to remember that I saw "Crash" in the theatre, and that I was completely underwhelmed; I thought it was boring and repetative. But since it was LESS boring and repetitive than the book -- while still being an uncompromising adaptation -- I thought Cronenberg had probably done his job.

I just watched the movie again, and after 45 minutes I actually started enjoying myself.

It's amusing to watch the movie's desperate trailer, which outlines exactly what "Crash" ISN'T. By no stretch of the imagination is it a sexy thriller about people who get seduced into some sort of swinger's club, an idea that's so totally off the mark that it's hilarious.

Instead, "Crash" is simply emotionally dead. It has no soul. But since the book was pretty much about soulless human cyphers wandering around an impossible physical/spiritual world -- which may, in fact, be intended to say something about our own world by extension -- that is, I suppose, the entire point of Cronenberg's film.

And that's what makes it such a perfect match for Cronenberg, who for the first half of his career (which many of us consider "the best half") made movies about equally soulless, sexually-frightening people wandering around the impossible physical/spiritual world of...Toronto. In Cronenberg's films there always seems to be a thick, opaque fabric pulled over the eyes of the people, not because the director didn't UNDERSTAND people but because...

...well, I can only speculate WHY he made movies like that, but I think at its root it's one segment of a Canadian aesthetic. A coldness. A repression. People who function and live and produce but who are, on the inside, unknowable and just a little scary.

What made "Crash" most interesting to me this time around was trying to untangle the bundled-up strands of Cronenberg and Ballard, since -- in my experience -- Ballard ALSO tended to write about Cronenberg-ish people, though in a way that's never particularly engaged me.

So now, while I recognize that "Crash" is in some small way deliberately excessive, its "audaciousness" is that it treated its excesses with such INDIFFERENCE. If you enjoy the sex in "Crash" then I don't believe you're really watching the movie...or maybe you have a fetish for cars, or one of the actors. But note that none of the actors -- all of whom are beautiful -- are presented as "porn star beautiful" at all...they look spotty, haggard, and in need to a good sleep.

I think the sexiest part of "Crash" is the Gardiner Expressway. And I'm pretty sure that Cronenberg intended it to be that way.

"The Ruins" Exclusive Reenactment (And Other Photos Too!)

Due to this year's constant rain, the foliage in front of my apartment has grown so huge as to completely cover my living room window. In the process my view has changed; I don't see cars or people anymore, instead I see insects eating each other.

Inspired by this monstrous plant I decided to stage a reenactment of "The Ruins," as performed by The Little Lemuria Players (that's me and my cat). Here it is on Flickr.

In addition, I put up some miscellaneous pictures from the last few months. I haven't been in much of a picture-taking mood but I have a feeling that's going to change...

PS: See that spot on my leg? It's the scar from that car that hit me in July. Just an example of the reconfiguration of human biology by technology...

Hank and Lily at The Starlight

After two weeks of crappiness -- heretofore known as "The Terrible Fortnight of Terrible Half-Living" -- what better way to celebrate my return to health than to see Hank and Lily at The Starlight...yes, just a few blocks from my house!

I first stumbled across Hank and Lily's music in an otherwise not-so-great compilation called "The Aaargh! Annual Year Two." I ordered their debut double CD and was blown away by the enthusiasm and eclectic WHOOMF that is a Hank and Lily concept. I love that they're doing their own thing, they're doing it well, and they seem to absolutely ADORE what they do. How could I not be captivated?

On Saturday night I lost my live "Hank and Lily Show" virginity. The crowd was sparse -- it was an early show with little publicity, after all -- but they immediately put us at ease by moving our tables and chairs to the dancefloor...it's frustrating to feel like you're SUPPOSED to dance in order to encourage a performance, whereas H&L seemed to understand that simply WATCHING is fun enough!

I recorded four of their songs, which you can see on YouTube here. My favourite by far was "Alligator Boy," which brought out all the energy of the spunky duo:



After the show they were marvelously available at the swag table. I have difficulty being coherent around performers I adore, but even after I asked them when they were coming back to Waterloo -- a silly, premature question considering they were JUST LEAVING -- they still consented to pose with me:



Unfortunately the show ended FAR too quickly since the club needed to accommodate its regular "Global Warming" DJs, but sometimes the shortest things are the sweetest, and we at least have copies of their new CD ("North America") to keep us going. Plus I also got one-of-a-kind rendering called "Hank Punches a Werewolf," in which a relatively sad-looking monster is -- indeed -- being punched by Hank. Bliss!

PS: Jenny Whiteley shared the stage for most of the set. It was difficult to get a feel for the sort of thing she does, but workmate Reg says she's fab.